


Slip Away

by cptsdstars



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Also Arthur/John/Abigail if you squint, Background Arthur/Eliza, John Marston’s emotional constipation, M/M, POV Second Person, Pining, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-20 02:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17613530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsdstars/pseuds/cptsdstars
Summary: You’re sitting with him at the end of the earth. Feet dangling dangerously over the edge, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth between the two of you. You can see everything from up here but your eyes keep drifting back to his. He usually loves this. He usually stares out as far as he can, drinking in the scenery, saving each beautiful image in the back of his mind so he can sketch it later.Now he stares down. Down past the edge to the rocks and jutting edges of the tops of the trees below. Your gut twists and you want to hold his hand suddenly, pull him away from the edge. You don’t know quite why.





	1. Chapter 1

You’re just barely thirteen years old, your voice surprisingly hoarse for your size. It’s cause of the noose you still dream about on cold nights, but you ain’t gonna tell no one that. 

He’s your everything. You want to do everything he does. The way he holds himself and the way he confidently smiles at the barrel of a gun has your young heart being helplessly pulled along by his horse. You want to be him. All he does is laugh when you walk too close or steal one of his shirts so you can look like him. 

He means everything to you. Confident and never scared, better than Dutch or Hosea could ever be in your eyes. Your own personal dime novel hero with a million dollar smile. 

He disappears sometimes. You want to go with but even in your stubbornness you understand you’re still too young to really be helpful on any trips whatever the reason. But he always comes back. Not a scratch on him, mood improved, a surprise piece of hard candy he swiped for you, maybe some extra cigarettes you can hide under your pillow because Hosea says you’re still too young to be smoking. 

You miss him when he’s gone but you take up his role. You button up your shirt and hold your hands to your belt and demand Dutch give you some work to do. Dutch always laughs and sends you away to do some stupid childish chore and you always beg a little more than usual. He just rolls his eyes at your naivety. It ain’t fair.

One day he comes back and he’s broken. Your dime novel hero with a million dollar smile is nowhere to be found. 

You watch him practically fall off his horse, shove past the girls who greeted him with smiles and he goes and shuts himself away in his tent. You go and interrupt Dutch to tell him what happened and he looks worried but he tells you it’s fine. He does this sometimes. There’s nothing to worry about.

Bottles of liquor disappear into his tent and days pass without a word from him. Hosea’s stress about it could illuminate the whole forest around you. You want to go into his tent and ask him yourself what happened but you know he won’t talk to you. You’re still too young. 

Late one night there’s a commotion. Someone runs past your tent and you can hear Hosea’s panicked voice drift over the quiet dark. You sit still in your blankets and listen for any danger but no obvious threats appear. 

The only thing you hear is Bessie and Hosea arguing with someone in a hushed tone. 

You sneak out of your tent. You’re small so it’s easy to stay hidden in the dark. You make your way quietly to the edge of camp near the shore of a small lake. 

In the dark, illuminated by the light of the moon and the small lantern set in the sand, you can see Bessie and Hosea, hunched over your Arthur.

They’re washing blood off of his hands, his arms. You can’t see his face too well but you don’t think you want to. Bessie runs a gentle hand through his hair as Hosea wipes a wet rag over his arm. You’re suddenly cold. The realization hitting you and filling your lungs like cold water. _That was his blood._

“I didn’t mean to,” you can hear Arthur say. Hosea’s hands start to bandage up the angry red of Arthur’s arm. After a moment, he looks up at Arthur, he doesn’t look quite like himself. 

“I’m not mad at you, son,” Hosea says, and you think he sure does sound mad. 

“You best not ever do this again.” Hosea sounds dangerous. You’ve never heard his voice this way. Neither has Arthur if the way his shoulders stiffen in the moonlight is anything to judge by. 

Bessie runs a comforting hand down Arthur’s spine and Hosea lets go of his arm. 

“What could’ve _possibly_ possessed you to do this, boy?” 

Arthur takes his hand back, tucks it into his broad chest, looks down at his shoes. Your heart races. 

“Isaac’s dead.” He says it so quietly you almost miss it. But Bessie and Hosea heard him clear as day. Her hand falls away from his shoulder, coming up to cover her own mouth in shock. You see every ounce of anger disappear from Hosea’s eyes.

You wonder who Isaac could be. 

“Come sleep in our tent, son,” Hosea says softly. 

You see Arthur nod, realize suddenly, heartbreakingly, he’s just a kid too. 

-

You’re sixteen years old. You’ve never talked about what you saw that night. No one ever did. He was back to himself not two days later. The bandage on his arm covered by a brand new shirt. He never mentioned it. So you let years pass without so much as thinking about it. You almost forget about it. 

You’re sitting with him at the end of the earth. Feet dangling dangerously over the edge, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth between the two of you. You can see everything from up here but your eyes keep drifting back to his. He usually loves this. He usually stares out as far as he can, drinking in the scenery, saving each beautiful image in the back of his mind so he can sketch it later. 

Now he stares down. Down past the edge to the rocks and jutting edges of the tops of the trees below. 

Your gut twists and you want to hold his hand suddenly, pull him away from the edge. You don’t know quite why. 

Instead you grab the whiskey bottle out of his hand, let it burn the words you want to say right out of your throat. 

You’ve been doing that a lot lately. You think he’s noticed. But you don’t know what else to do. You can’t bring yourself to say the words stuck in the pit of your stomach, he wouldn’t listen anyway. You’re still a kid to him. 

“Marston?” he says quietly, reaching out for the whiskey. 

You swallow, let him pull your lifeline away. 

“You scared of dyin’?” he asks, the feeling in your gut roars to life again. 

“Not really,” you say. “Can’t be, for the way we live and all.”

He nods his head, understanding; takes a sip from the bottle. 

He’s your everything. You want to be him. You shamefully want to hold him. 

You see him across camp sometimes, changing his clothes, washing his face. The sight of his bare skin starts a fire deep under your skin and you’re embarrassed at the flush that creeps into your cheeks. You excuse yourself, ride away from the camp and safety and _Him_ and stop a few miles down the road. 

You tuck yourself away in the brush and touch yourself thinking it’s him and his hands and his skin and his lips.

He caught you one day, after you had finished. He laughed deep in his chest and clutched at his side and the flush that rose on your face was pure embarrassment. You chucked a rock at him to get him to stop and he told you it wasn’t nothing to be ashamed about. 

He didn’t know you finished with his name caught up in the shame in your throat. 

It’s caught up now, fighting against the burn of whiskey and the golden sunset glowing around his head. He looks so sad, too close to the edge of the cliff, your heart starts to race at the images that flash in your head. Arthur slipping, Arthur leaving, Arthur leaning over and kissing you, Arthur pulling you off the edge with him, tumbling into the trees, letting the rocks break your back, letting him pierce through your heart. 

“Arthur?” you say. It breaks free. 

He looks at you with his sad eyes and the heat in your veins turns to ice. 

“Are you alright?” 

He smiles at you, the only sound you can hear is the blood rushing in your ears. 

“I’m okay, Johnny Boy,” he says. He sets his hand on your thigh. “I’m okay.” 

-

You’ve just turned twenty yesterday. A bittersweet birthday. You’re now older than your own mother ever was. 

He is still everything to you. You think about him too much still. He had gotten back together with Mary and the sound that repeats over and over in your head is one you shouldn’t have heard in the first place. 

Arthur softly breathing, moaning out Mary’s name in the pitch black darkness where no one should’ve been able to hear him. You did and you hate yourself for it. 

You’re better at ignoring it now, letting it play out in your head when he looks at you with a toothy smile. It fills your veins with _something_ but you ignore it. You’re not a kid anymore but Arthur would never even consider you. 

So you take it out on the girls you meet in town, then. Smiling softly to them, treating them gently, how you want to be treated. Leave them in the morning with guilt sticking to your skin and a note that says _I’m sorry, miss_ written hastily on an old newspaper. 

One day Arthur comes back like he did that day so many years ago. Different, broken, his million dollar smile lost in the edges of his face. This time you’re older now, you know you can help.

You wait until sunset, when the camp is quiet and everyone is too busy in their own worlds to notice you sneaking into the closed off fabric of Arthur’s.

He jumps when you walk in, his hunting knife falls to the ground, catching the fading golden sunlight as it goes. His eyes are red, his fingertips are bleeding. 

“What are you doing?” you ask. You’re terrified of the answer. 

Arthur wipes his hand on his jeans, hopelessly smearing red on the fabric, your gut twists. 

“I could ask you the same thing, Marston,” he hisses at you. “Get the hell out.”

You don’t listen, you don’t move. You stare into his broken face. He hates you for it.

“I said get the hell out of here, John.” 

You refuse to listen, instead you step closer, into his space. You sit down next to him on his cot and watch his hand close into a fist like he’s about to hit you. But you know he won’t. Know he’s hiding his own blood from you. 

You look up into his face, he looks so tired. More exhausted than angry with you. You suddenly realize you don’t know what to do, you don’t know how to help him. 

He helps you instead, looks down into his lap. Breaks his own pissed-off facade. 

“Mary left me again,” he laughs. It doesn’t sound genuine. 

You don’t know what to say. You could tell him you never liked her anyway, tell him she was a bitch, tell him he doesn’t need her. 

Instead you do something stupid, because that’s all you’re ever good at, being stupid. 

You grab his fist and uncurl his fingertips, the blood he was holding within his hand spills over the side and into your hand and his jaw clenches. You look up at him and he shuts his eyes against the sight of you. Like he’s ashamed of it. Of you seeing him like this. 

You think suddenly you can’t be much more stupid than this. You can’t push yourself more into Arthur’s world than you already have. 

But you do. 

You lean forward gently, close your eyes and slowly press your lips to his. Arthur’s bloody hand closes around yours and suddenly everything you feel is him. You feel his heartbeat, his lips, his breathing. It’s too much all at once and yet it’s not enough. 

He kisses you back and you feel like you could die here with him. He could pull you underwater, his lips on yours, and you would happily drown with him. 

His blood seeps under your fingernails and you push yourself closer to him, wanting everything about him to suffocate you. 

He pulls away after another moment, lets his forehead rest on yours to catch his breath. You open your eyes to look to his. They shine a bit, but you won’t say nothing about it. 

He smiles softly at you and kisses you again. 

_He’s everything to you._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t know I was gonna write more but here we go

It hits you like a bullet in the chest, sitting there with him. 

He’s holding Jack, _your son_ , all proper-like how Susan had shown you two the day before. Smiling and pinching his chubby cheeks, happier than you’ve seen him in a long while. 

The way he smiles shatters your heart and forces to the front of your mind a moment in time you swore you had forgotten. 

You remembered Isaac. 

-

It’s two weeks to the day since you been hung and didn’t die. 

Your voice still comes out as a whisper and you still don't really trust the fella who rescued you, the rest of the people you met after him were all fine and nice, but Dutch? He’s dangerous. You feel it deep under your skin but there wasn’t anything you could do about it. You owe him. 

Hosea’s nice, him and his wife try and treat you like a kid even though you hate them for it. It’s been a while since anyone had, so you really don’t mind as much as you seem. 

Arthur’s your favorite. The day Dutch had saved you and dropped you in his world was the day you met him. He had tried to ruffle your hair and you had reached up and took a chunk out of his hand with your teeth. 

He wasn’t mad at you; he swore and then after a moment, burst out laughing, looked at Dutch and sputtered out, _I like him!_

You ain’t too sure what you expected life to be like with the _Van der Linde Gang_. So far it wasn’t anything special. You ate more food than you’ve ever eaten in your life, Hosea gave you a jacket so you wasn’t cold, and you’re sharing a tent with Arthur while he snores. 

It’s late and you can’t sleep. Your gut twists and your neck aches and you try to ignore it and shut your eyes but something’s wrong. And it ain’t just in your head either. 

You stand up carefully so you don’t wake Arthur and walk out into the quiet dark. The moonlight is so bright you can see out into the corners of the forest and you think about running. You think about running as far as you can for as long as you can, as far away from Dutch and the fear pooling in your gut. 

You may be young, but you feel like he’s gonna be the end of you. 

You walk out to the campfire, nothing left of it but a few glowing embers and some soft smoke. You take a deep breath, breathing it in, holding it in your lungs and letting it burn it’s way through your heart. 

Then a twig snaps in the woods to your left. 

Your instincts kick you into action and you run into the nearest tent, praying no one saw you. You’re met with the sleeping figure of Dutch, holding on tightly to an asleep Annabelle and you swallow your panic to step closer. 

“Dutch,” you say. 

You reach out to touch his shoulder. “Dutch.”

He sits up so fast you barely have time to inhale before the barrel of his revolver is pressed against your nose. You stand your ground. 

You may be young, but you know what you saw. 

“We’re being ambushed,” you whisper, and Dutch blinks before pulling the gun away from your face. 

“What did you say?” 

As if in response, a gunshot breaks through the stillness of the night and a bullet tears through the fabric of Dutch’s tent. Dutch shoves you down to the ground as he grabs another gun. You stay there, covering your head like you learned to do too early in your life. 

More and more gunshots fill the air and the sound is deafening to your young ears. Dutch steps out of the tent, fires back blindly in the night to protect his camp. Annabelle is awake now too, startled out of her sleep and stumbling around in the dark for a shotgun to go and join him. She looks at you worryingly and you suddenly don’t mind being treated like a child. 

“Go find Arthur and tell him I said to get the two of you out of here,” she says to you. “Now.”

You nod and watch her go out the front of the tent to join her husband in the fight. 

You’re small, so it’s easy to crawl under the tents, under the fire, back towards your tent, where Arthur is standing in front, crouched behind a wagon wheel, firing blindly into the woods. 

“Marston!” he shouts when he sees you, and you crawl up close enough so he can hear your ruined voice over the chaos. 

“Annabelle says we gotta go!” you shout as best you can, and Arthur looks upset.

You know he wants to stay and fight, know he hates being your babysitter, know he knows better than to disobey. 

He shuts his eyes and his jaw clenches for a moment before he looks up at you, “Okay,” he says, “let’s get out of here.”

He grabs the back of your shirt and yanks you up, starts to run towards the horses, dragging you helplessly along through the bullets. 

You hear Hosea shout something at Arthur, most likely instructions to meet up after this is over, but you don’t hear much details. You’re too busy running for your life.

Arthur makes it to his horse first, jumps up in one swift movement before you’re even close enough to get on. When you are, he grabs your shirt again, hauls you up behind him, and turns to run out the back side of the camp. 

It doesn’t work too well. The horse is terrified and Arthur very narrowly avoids getting shot as the two of you weave through the tents. You hold on to his waist for dear life, figuring that since the law didn’t get you the first time they might as well get you now. 

Then a bullet tears through the flesh of Arthur’s leg. 

He yells-- the horse bucks-- you let go of Arthur-- 

You tumble to the ground and everything stops. 

-

You wake up in a bed of all places. You expected to be six feet under so it’s a wonderful surprise to have a pillow under your head.

_Oh, your head_. It feels like you’ve been hit by a train. You must have hit a rock on your way down off the horse because the goose egg on the back of your head throbs with every shaky breath you take. 

Your mouth tastes like vomit, your head hurts like hell, but you’re warm and in a bed, so you let your eyes slip closed again. You must be safe. 

When you wake up again it’s dark, and this time you pry your eyes open to look around. It takes a moment to adjust but when you do you put together some details. You’re in a small house, you hit your head, Arthur got hurt. 

You have to go find Arthur. 

You stand up slowly, your vision starts to blur and your head pounds but you have to be sure he’s safe. The room you’re in isn’t very big, so you open the only door you see and you’re met with soft firelight, the smell of fresh bread, and _Arthur._

He’s sitting on the ground, leg bandaged up, smiling wildly at a baby sitting on his knee. 

He holds the kid who couldn’t have been much more than just a year old by his waist and bounces him up and down on his leg, the one that wasn’t shot, and the kid laughs and screeches with delight. 

Arthur doesn’t notice you at all, he’s too enthralled with the child in his arms.

“John!” a woman says to your left, and that finally causes Arthur to look up at you. “Go back to bed you shouldn’t be walking around just yet.”

You take a look at the woman. She’s young, only a couple years younger than Arthur. Beautiful, brunette, with big kind brown eyes, and a gentle smile that reminds you of Annabelle. 

She then rushes you back into the room and you don’t get to see Arthur or the child again. The woman pushes you back in bed and gives you some of the water that was resting on the table next to the bed. She tells your her name is Eliza, that you had a nasty fall, and you and Arthur can stay as long as you need. You thank her as best you can with your soft voice and she smiles beautifully at you.

You dream about her, you think. 

You see that living room again, Arthur’s sitting next to you on the ground, his leg bleeding something fierce and you want to help you want to reach out and touch but your arms don’t move. 

Eliza kneels down next to him, washes the blood away from his leg gently, avoiding his eyes. All you can do is watch.

Arthur brings his hand up to touch her face gently. “I’m sorry, Eliza,” he says, and her hands still. 

She doesn’t say anything and Arthur runs his finger across her cheekbone. 

“We didn’t have anywhere else to go and I thought the kid was gonna die. We’ll be gone in a few days. I promise.”

Eliza looks up at him then, “I ain’t mad, Arthur.”

Arthur blinks at her, “Why?”

“What do you mean why?” Eliza’s face breaks into a smile. “You ain’t my husband or anything but I still worry about you out there. You can ask for my help. I guess we’re still some sort of family.”

Arthur looks at her, face scrunched up in confusion and Eliza laughs softly. 

“We’re a real fucked up family, I guess.” 

She leans over and kisses Arthur’s cheek gently. 

You wake up unsure if that was even a dream. 

-

You never saw Eliza or that baby again, when you and Arthur left the house they were gone. You never asked him who they were and you never talked about them again. 

You forgot the whole thing even happened.

But a decade or so later, sitting in your tent, watching Arthur give all his love and attention to your son, the memory came flooding back. 

And with it a terrifying realization. 

“You had a son,” you say quietly, and Arthur’s smile disappears. 

“John—“ he says, and you interrupt him. 

“I remember we got hurt in an ambush and you took me to a house and you were playing with the baby-- that was your son, wasn’t it?”

It all spills out faster than you can think about it and all you can do is watch Arthur’s heart break around the words. 

He stands up, hands you your son. He won’t look you in the eye. 

You take Jack from him, careful to support his head, careful of your next words. 

“Arthur. What happened to them?”

Arthur’s jaw clenches, he won’t look at you. 

“They were murdered while I was away one day. Both of ‘em.” 

You suddenly remember being thirteen, seeing the blood drip from Arthur’s arm and off his fingers into the moonlight. Hosea’s pure fear and worry put into scrubbing the wound and hiding it away. Two words that back then you had no idea what they meant now held too much meaning for you. 

_Isaac's dead._

“I couldn’t save them.” Arthur says, looking at his feet. “It’s my fault they’re dead.”

You watch him leave. You’re freezing suddenly, frozen in fear, terrified of the life wiggling in your arms. 

If Arthur couldn’t do this you sure as hell can’t. 

You love Abigail, love Jack even though you ain’t sure he’s really yours. 

But Arthur, the toughest, smartest, most caring man you know lost his family, lost the people he loved and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He almost died because of that loss. And you realize you don’t want to go through that either. If Arthur couldn’t protect his kid who had a whole home and a stable life you sure as hell can't keep your kid safe. 

You don’t want to. 

You run the next day.


	3. Chapter 3

Everyone leaves you. 

That’s all it is. A curse brought on by your daddy or God or the devil— whatever. But everyone who you’ve ever cared about leaves you eventually. 

He left yesterday. 

You know he’s gone for good. 

Hosea told you not to worry too much, everyone walks out of camp sometimes, everyone needs a break, he just had a baby he’s probably just real tired, he’ll be fine. 

Hosea doesn’t know you’re the reason he’s gone. 

You don’t know what happened, don’t know what came over you. He asked you about Isaac all quietly and caring and you love the stupid fool what were you supposed to do? 

You caught him looking at the shame etched deep in the skin of your arm and everything. He remembered every detail from that night. There was no use in lying to him. 

Now he’s gone for good. 

Abigail knows it too. She walks around camp like a ghost, her eyes far away, holding her son right to her chest, terrified of letting go. The women tell her not to worry, that he does this sometimes, that he’ll be back in a day or two. 

But she catches your eyes and stares at the guilt you wear like a noose around your neck and you both know he’s gone. 

The third night without him she screams. 

You’re sitting on the floor of his tent with her, watching Jack’s little chest rise and fall as he sleeps belly-up on John’s cot. You softly run your fingers over the tiny bit of hair on his head, and you hate yourself because you’re the only one Abigail lets touch him now that John’s gone. 

And it’s your fault he’s gone.

You look at Abigail in the dark, she hasn’t been sleeping, the dark circles resting under her eyes make her look years beyond her age. She’s exhausted. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, and her tired eyes catch your own. 

“Why are you sorry?” she says. “You ain’t the one who left me.”

“It ain’t your fault,” you say. “You know that, right?” 

She laughs at you in response. It sounds broken. 

You let your hand entangle hers and tears start to pool in the corners of her eyes. You look right at her, just to let her know you’re telling the truth.

“It ain’t your fault, Abigail.”

She starts to cry. It’s the first time you’ve seen her cry since John up and left and every ounce of her pain comes out all at once. She squeezes your hands in hers and hiccups and sobs and all you can do is watch. 

It isn’t that late, the whole camp can sure as hell hear her. 

Jack begins to stir and you try to shush her but she hits at your hands and screams her pain into the night. 

You have no choice but to grab her by her waist and hold her close like she’s a child throwing a fit and she hates you for it. She screams and she wails and she hits you and curses at you and God and the devil and John. 

You ain’t never felt so damn guilty in your life. 

She falls asleep eventually. Wears herself out and falls asleep curled up into your chest. Your heart aches and your legs hurt but you refuse to move. She needs the rest. 

But being pinned down to the cold ground doesn’t stop your mind from wandering. It wanders from Abigail’s soft jawline to the faint firelight you can see from under the flaps of the tent to the knife you can see sticking up in the wood of a table sitting next to the cot. 

It’s been years since you’ve felt that familiar pull in your gut. Not since John had caught you with the tip of your knife dug into your fingers to prove something to yourself. 

You don’t actually know what that something is. Maybe it’s to prove you still feel something after all the hurt you’ve had, or maybe it’s to prove that you deserve to bleed for your sins, but it ain’t like you’re a saint. 

The tips of your fingertips go numb and you shut your eyes against the feeling. You think about John instead. How it’s your fault he’s gone, how he’s a coward, how much you hate him, how badly you wish he was here so you could hit him, how badly you wish he was here so you could kiss him. 

Tell him he’s a goddamn fool. 

Tell him he was everything to you.

You lean forward and grab the knife, careful not to disturb Abigail. 

Hold it in your hand carefully, letting it catch what little light seeps in the tent. Your chest aches, Abigail feels so heavy against it and you hate yourself so damn much you can hardly breathe.

You want to dig that knife deep into your skin and scrape out everything horrible and ugly about you and every memory of John that you hold near to your heart.

The way he smiles, the way he laughs, and the way he kisses you gently when the whole world falls apart around you. It all lives right there next to your heart. Has since you met the stupid kid. 

You look up to the heavens through the blur in your eyes and you wish your heart would stop. 

Jack makes a soft noise as he stretches his little arms up above his head and the grip you had on the knife loosens. Before you can stop them, tears spill over the sides of your face. 

As much as you want to, you ain’t gonna do that to Abigail and her little baby. 

John’s gone and abandoned them. He could be dead for all you care anymore. But if you went and died too Abigail would be all alone, Jack would be all alone. You wouldn’t be able to keep them safe. 

You weren’t able to keep Isaac safe. 

They were everything to you and you never cared enough to show them. But in some God willing way, this is your second chance, this is your redemption. 

You set the knife on the ground and kiss Abigail’s head softly. 

They’re everything to you, now. 

-

John was everything to you, once. 

When you were younger, heartbroken and reckless he was there at your side, keeping your head above water, holding you up by your ears. 

You didn’t know what you would ever do without him. He’s saved your life before. Saved you from the law, saved you from other gangs, saved you from yourself. 

You never really thanked him, but that wasn’t how you worked. 

You thanked him in secret, in the dark under the stars, hidden so far away where no one could see you, not even God. 

Sometimes when you close your eyes you can still feel him. The way his heart pounded under your fingers, the way he kissed you, desperately like he’s always wanted to, the way he shook coming undone and shouting into the night. 

He only ever said your name like that and god, you felt holy. 

This time, when he said your name you felt nothing. 

You expected to feel hurt or rage or heartbreak or you expected to explode like Abigail did. Screaming and hitting and pouring out all your hurt for him to see. 

But he says your name and you feel nothing. 

You do feel every pair of eyes in camp on you, on Abigail, waiting for you to do something, waiting for her to break. It feels like a standoff, back in the early days Hosea would tell you about some nights over the campfire. 

You and Abigail and your pain on one side. John and his ignorance on the other. 

Fingers itching to draw your pistols. 

You wish you felt anything. Looking at him standing there, asking for forgiveness like he hadn’t up and ran away without a word. 

“I missed you both so much,” he says. Abigail throws a rock at him. 

Days pass. You and Abigail act like he ain’t even returned. You still share a tent. You still hold her at night. You still are the only one allowed to touch Jack, though he’s walking around on his own wobbly legs now. 

John corners you one night, away from camp, hidden in the dark behind the trees. It feels you’re hiding away like you did when you was young. But you ain’t gonna kiss him now.

“Why haven’t you hit me?” he says, and you don’t feel like justifying that with an answer. You look down at your feet and try and shove your way out from his space but he pushes your shoulder harder into the wood of the tree. 

“You ain’t mad?” he says, and god he’s so stupid. 

“Of course I’m mad,” you hiss. “I’m so damn mad I don’t want to fucking talk to you. Now, leave me be.”

You pour every once of intimidation you can muster into the words. It would work on anyone else. But he knows you. 

He looks right through you, right through the stone and the hardened scars all the way through to the torn flesh on your arm that burns some nights, all the way to the hurt you carry right next to your heart in the space where John was. He looks at you like he did when he was a dumb kid, stealing your shirts and mimicking your walk. 

He looks at you like he did the night he caught you tearing at your own skin. 

He looks at you like you’re everything to him. 

You wish you weren’t. 

He picks up your hand, runs his fingertips over the raised flesh on yours. You have to shut your eyes. You can’t look at him anymore. He hasn’t forgotten any detail about you, about what he saw. You hate him. 

“I’m a fool,” he says. You bite your tongue. 

You know him too. Know exactly where he wants this to go. And as much as you hate him, you’re not sure you want to stop him. 

“Arthur…” he breathes. 

You wish your heart would stop. 

He kisses you. It’s an apology. Gentle and soft and full of hurt and unspoken words of love he lost in the dirt when he ran. His lips just softly meet your own, you don’t kiss back, just keep your eyes shut and hold your breath. 

He pulls away, laces his fingers between yours. You shut your eyes tighter against the hurt that bubbles to the surface. 

He was everything to you. 

You kiss him now, shove your lips into his with as much force as you can muster. All the hurt and pain and betrayal put into biting as his lip. He lets out a surprised noise but doesn’t pull away. Kisses back with equally as much force, pushes you back into the tree.

_You hate him. You hate him. You hate him._

His fingers run from your hand up to your neck to hold your head there, returning every ounce of anger you threw at him in the kiss. You pull away violently, turn your head to the side to catch your breath. He takes the opportunity to move his lips to the exposed skin of your neck, your collar bone. He’s not kissing, he’s biting, you hiss through your teeth and grab his hips, pull him flush against you as heat runs down the length of your body. 

You think about Abigail. How she screamed night after night because she loved John, _she loves John_ and he had to go and slip away in the night like a coward. Pulling out hair and trust and love as he went. 

You don’t want to forgive him. Not for hurting Abigail, not for leaving Jack, not for hurting you. 

But he slides down to his knees, looks up at you in the dark and takes you into his mouth and begs for forgiveness and you won’t ever give him that.

But God, _he’s everything to you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway the untold part of the story is that John tried the same thing with Abigail and she tried to crush his head with her thighs


End file.
